Abstract / Summary

Six commissioned original essays have been written by practitioner academics at the forefront of contemporary theatre practices and discourses (David Williams, Phelim McDermott, Dick McCaw, Lorna Marshall, Franc Chamberlain, and Jonathan Pitches). Each essayist was invited to respond imaginatively and reflectively to the thematic of their section without composing a potentially tokenistic over-view. The extracts provided (over 40 in total) have been chosen either to provide a close reading of a particular physical theatre practice, or to offer a historical contextualisation of, or philosophical or analytical perspective on the performative subject matter of the book. In addition, further substantiating the volume’s status as a ‘critical reader’, we have included extracts from texts that articulate the nature of embodiment and physicality within sport, music and cultural studies. The volume also contains a ‘photo essay’ of Etienne Decroux.

Item Type:

Book

Additional Information:

‘Physical Theatres: A Critical Reader’ needs to be understood and contextualised in association with its companion volume, ‘Physical Theatres: A Critical Introduction’. While either volume may be read separately and in its own right, the ‘Critical Reader’ has been imagined and constructed as companion to the authored book. Consequently, after an introduction by the co-editors, the original essays and extracts have been assembled under the same section headings as chapters in the ‘Critical Introduction’. Here the intention was not for a mechanistic relationship between each volume, but rather to provide an opportunity for the reader to embellish and enrich the reading of each by reference to the other. The ‘Critical Reader’ and its companion volume ‘A Critical Introduction’ follow Routledge’s publication in 2003-4 of Schechner’s ‘Performance Studies: an Introduction’ and Bial’s ‘Performance Studies Reader’. Thus in conception and practice these companion volumes represent an innovation in publishing practices.